Zombies vs. Sheep

What could hordes of puppet zombies have against sheep, anyway? Everyone knows zombies hunger for human flesh only, not mutton. Even though the concept seems designed solely to appeal to that elusive zombie/sheep-loving target demographic, this arcade-like shooting gallery is a lot of fun for just a buck.

Over the course of several waves, you’ll tap to blast away at puppet zombies, bats, fire-dropping phoenixes, and at least one seriously pissed-off sun. By tilting the device, you move a sheep at the bottom of the screen (who is not the one shooting, sadly) to avoid flaming debris and collect coins. These coins can then be cashed in for upgrades to your health, ammo, and movement speed.

Ay yi yi!

With OpenFeint, you can upload your high scores to a global leaderboard, but what this game really needs is a level select option. Playing the same few levels at the start becomes predictable, and we would have liked the chance to skip ahead and see more of the game’s later variety.

Zombies vs. Sheep has an unsettling aesthetic, which Steve described in his preview as an “archaic penny arcade machine in an abandoned Oaxacan carnival.” Even without a level select menu, this strange and addictive shooter is well worth 99 pennies.

Editor’s Note: Cheap Shot is a new review feature where we pick a game that costs $.99 or $1.99 and give it the quick review treatment. While you won’t find a 1-4 score or our usual pros and cons, you will get a direct assessment of the game based on a one-hour playthrough. You’ll still find our full-length, regular reviews for other games.

Because Studio Radiolares, the guys behind the Rez-like shooter Radio Flare, have actually found a way to put a unique spin on a majorly cliched game type. How’d they do it? Well… have you ever heard of El Dia de los Muertos?

Not a dyed-in-the-wool shooter.

That’s the “Day of the Dead” in English; it’s a Mexican holiday where the living celebrate the memory of the dead by leaving offerings, lighting candles, and fashioning distinctive-looking skull masks and skeleton puppets. These grinning, emaciated death’s-heads sometimes appear in candy form, too. It’s awesomely creepy–and creepily awesome.

Zombies vs. Sheep borrows that Latin American craftwork motif for its skeletal zombies, which look like they’re cut out of construction paper. They drop out of the sky on ropes. The idea is to shoot these guys by tapping on them. This releases coins for your sheep to scoop up along the ground via tilt controls. Pausing the game takes you to the store, where you can jack up your sheep by spending cash on speed upgrades, additional ammo, and so on.

If you wait too long, the zombies fall to pieces, eventually dropping a flaming skull that strikes your sheep dead. Luckily, headshots instantly nip a threatening zombie in the bud. There are other types of baddies to deal with, too, like bats and nasty spider bosses, and other guns to shoot as well. After going as far as you can, OpenFeint makes a note of your score and tells you which achievements you’ve earned.

All of this is accompanied by the sweet strains of mariachi guitars, over gentle Latin rhythms. The overall impression is one of playing some weird, archaic penny arcade machine in an abandoned Oaxacan carnival.

Zombies vs. Sheep is bizarre, all right, but it’s a good kind of weird. We were playing a final build, so the game should be hitting the App Store soon.

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The fine folks at Milkbag games have released Sidewords. A fun little diversion of a word game that is the devil child of crosswords and scrabble. For each level in the game the grid must be completed to win the level — this means that each letter at the top and side must be used. And not just the top or side, but each word must be made up of letters from the top and side to create a grid. It’s a pain, but in the right kind of way. Even the simplest of the levels can be a head scratcher until you get used to the game. Well worth the $3 as a diversion while we wait for Milkbag to finally release Snow Siege.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math.

It’s not always easy to tear your kids away from their tablets and make them do something edifying. Thankfully, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math relieves you of this task by turning mathematics into a fun touchscreen video game. Win win!

Aimed at children 3-6 years old, the app makes math fun by ‘gamifying’ it, turning simple mathematics problems into little challenges so that your pre-schooler can learn and play at the same time.

There are more than two dozen mini-games, split across three categories: Numbers, Shapes and Measurements, and Add and Subtract. According to the developer the difficulty of these puzzles is adaptive too, so kids of any ability can be both encouraged and challenged.

Mini Dayz has launched and it’s a pixelated 2.5D open world that’s as brutal as the desktop version. In this game, the player is dumped on shore with nothing. They must scavenge around for food, water, and weapons while avoiding attack. It’s the kind of game where the goal is to stay alive as long as possible. But that will never be very long. It’s oddly free and seems to only have an ad on the main screen — for now.

Pewter Games has brought their charming point and click adventure The Little Acre to iOS. It’s an amazingly beautiful animated adventure set in a sort of hybrid magical / alien world. A great all ages adventure and very fun.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, The House of Da Vinci by Blue Brain Games. There’s a reason Leonardo Da Vinci is the only renaissance figure who routinely shows up in video games you know. With his remarkable inventiveness and genius for creative problem-solving, Da Vinci was a gamer through and through. He was just born 500 hundred years too soon. Thankfully, there are studios like Blue Brain Games to bring him to life in videogame form. The House of Da Vinci, which comes to us courtesy of a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign, is a puzzler that seeks to channel the artistry and innovation of its title character.

You play as one of Da Vinci’s more promising apprentices, and you have the challenging task of trying to work out where the hell he’s gone. Was he assassinated by the church? Who knows. Has he quietly gone into a retirement? Perhaps. Did he accidentally invent a shrink ray and shrink himself down to the size of an dustmite? Probably not. Da Vinci’s workshop looks beautiful, thanks to some impressive 3D graphics, and the in-game environment is crammed with all the elaborate machines and crazy inventions you’d expect to find in the workplace of a renaissance genius.(more…)

Poly Bridge is out now on iOS, and it’s good to have it! It’s a great game and many seem to agree that it’s the best bridge builder game available. But the iOS versions, so far, is missing the sandbox mode. I would hope that it’s coming soon in an update. If you are all interested in physics puzzlers, grab this one. (Note: the video is for the PC version, I have yet to see a trailer for the mobile version, the developer Dry Cactus isn’t that great at marketing…)

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